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You can also get stump remover at any hardware store or lawn & garden center. Pure saltpeter. Dissolve the stump remover in water and soak the cotton rope in the solution to make a slow match. You can also soak your tinder in the salt peter.

We used to have to test the fire kits for chemicals during competitions at rondys. I have seen bird nests go up like a road flare when hit by the first spark!

You can also get stump remover at any hardware store or lawn & garden center. Pure saltpeter. Dissolve the stump remover in water and soak the cotton rope in the solution to make a slow match. You can also soak your tinder in the salt peter.

We used to have to test the fire kits for chemicals during competitions at rondys. I have seen bird nests go up like a road flare when hit by the first spark!

I got some Spectracide stump remover today. Also some cotton rope. I cut the head off of a 8x57 case and the rope fit just right. 35 Whelen was too big. I've got the stump rot and cotton rope soaking over night. I give it a shake every now and then. I'll dry it out tomorrow and probably get some results to report on by monday afternoon.

It can go either way here. Tomorrow can be dry and windy or humid and still, or dry and still or humid and windy. Mostly it's dry. I used about 2 cups of water and enough KN03 to have a good bit undissolved. After I take the rope out (I only used about 1 foot of rope) I'm going to put some gun cleaning patches in there and dry them. I think a spark should catch on one of those under a batch of tinder.

I have been around KN03 for most of my life. Always used it as high nitrogen fertilizer. I knew that the made bombs from it but making bombs is not my thing. I had no idea it would burn and no idea that stump rot was KN03.

I ended up using strands from a cotton mop head, dipped in canning wax, didn't have copper so cut a beer can rolled the aluminum around a pencil to create a form and ran the mop head strand into it. Works really well although created with redneck engineering

I have been around KN03 for most of my life. Always used it as high nitrogen fertilizer. I knew that the made bombs from it but making bombs is not my thing. I had no idea it would burn and no idea that stump rot was KN03.

Alan

Look at it this way.....
Go to garden center......

Pick up a box or two of stump rotter KN03
Pick up box or two ground dusting sulfur

Stop by the barbecue section......
Pick up bag of natural charcoal

Mash the charcoal in to powder.
Get big mixing bowl......

You see where I'm going with this?

Geezer Squad....Charter Member #1
Evoking the 50 year old rule...
First 50 years...worried about the small stuff...second 50 years....Not so much
Member Wahoo Killer knives club....#27

And contrary to internet myth it is not illegal to make your own in small batches and for your own use. It is like making your own firearms, you are not a manufacturer until you sell them/it. The best instructions I ever found were in the Foxfire Books (#5, p242). They go into detail on every aspect of the process.

It is illegal to store more than 50 pounds if you do not have a federally approved powder magazine. We are talking about a concrete building with a blast directing roof, very pricey.

This is not rocket science and the recipe has been available to the public or 1500 years in every encyclopedia in the public library or on the home bookshelf even before the invention of the internet, where bad and bogus recipes abound.

The charcoal is often the weak spot in the recipe. Hardwood charcoal, like you buy in the store, is not good for the mix. It works best if it is made from willow and powdered like the other components, not just ground until crunchy. Use stale urine to wet it down so you can mix it without fear of disaster (the ammonia makes it stronger) and only use wooden utensils. While it is still damp mud force it through a sieve of window screen and let the granuals dry, then break it up to proper consistency.

Oh yea, remember no smoking while you do all this, or while handling the resulting product. The one and only disaster I have ever encountered was due to smoking while using "the product". And avoid static electricity, thunderstorms, ferrous metals and such during the mixing processes.

"Back in the day" the contents of every outhouse in Great Britain was claimed as property of the King. The crap was leeched to KN03 and the urine was used in the mixing process.

I have a book somewhere, that gives essentially what you just described but collection of the niter was a more time consuming process. They described making a slurry, letting it dry and grinding to the desired level of granulation. I like your idea better in that much of the granulation process is done while wet. it could be stored dry form the screening and then processed in small batches as needed as I described doing below. I have never tried it but am quite sure I could whip up a batch if need be.

I had a hard time finding ffff for flash pan use. So, I decided to make my own. I have a half of a big brass flange and a piece of 1" brass rod that I use as a mortar and pestle. Using the brass keeps me sporting eyebrows at the least. I grind up that coated granular stuff they sell as BP and I get better ignition in the flinter. Not as good as real ffff but good enough to shoot.

Now that I'm old and have less to live for I may try a batch of BP someday, but not today.

Oh, the slow match worked great, just like it was supposed to do. I didn't try to get it to catch a spark but I hit it with a bic and blew on it and she was glowing red in no time. Thanks for the tip.

With BP being as difficult to find as it is most folks just use whatever they have in the pan.

I am lucky and live only 45 minutes from Friendship, IN and I run over there and buy powder during the spring and fall shoots. They sell only to members and do not ship.

I have very little problem getting 3f to ignite in the pan and sometimes I use 2f but I normally drill my flash holes out to .080" and I have one or two that go .100"

I drilled one to .125" once and used it as a demonstration "blank firing" gun. I could close the pan and pour a charge down the muzzle and thump the butt on the ground and powder would self charge the pan.

I decided to fire a real charge out of it. I do not remember the charge, could have been 60 or maybe 70 grains behind a tight patched .69" round ball.

When I pulled the trigger the ball went nowhere and the entire charge vented out that .125" flash hole or a good 5 seconds and made a whistling sound like banshees from he!!. Sounded like killing a rabbit slowly.

I don't really know how large my flash hole is. I should perhaps check. But, I have a devil of a time getting the powder in the pan to ignite period. I'm using pyrodex rifle powder. When I crush it up it ignites but right out of the bottle, iffy. I'm getting a good shower of sparks down into the pan.

When Historic sites have reenactments they often order BP for the reenactors if there is a battle involved. When I lived in TN we used to go to the battle reenactments just to get the #1 of powder they gave for showing up.

Trying to shoot Pyrodex out of a flinter is generally a lost cause. I have used it in the past loading a primer charge of 15-20gns of BP, then the remainder of the charge in Pyrodex. BP in the pan to catch the sparks of course.

I use Siler locks on most of my guns and I have a flintlock frizen with the plate removed and a percussion nipple threaded into the top of the pan. I can clamp a small block of metal in the jaws of the flint hammer and convert any of my Siler flintlocks to percussion without any other modification and shoot Pyrodex if that is all that is available.